Murnaghan interview with Alan Milburn, former Health Secretary, 17.01.16
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS
DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, in a speech yesterday Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, set out his plans to institutionalise fairness. He criticised the vast gap in pay between those at the top and the bottom of some companies, suggesting that a Labour government could ban companies from paying dividends to shareholders unless workers were paid the National Living Wage. Well I’m joined now by Labour’s former Health Secretary and now Chair of the government’s Social Mobility Commission, he is of course Alan Milburn, a very good morning to you Mr Milburn. I want to discuss some of those ideas in detail in a moment but give us the overview first of all from the point of view of your Commission on Social Mobility and it should be said also, very importantly, Child Poverty. There is the sense now that as a society we are stalling on both ambitions, is that the way you see it?
ALAN MILBURN: I think that is probably right. I think there is a noble ambition which the Prime Minister set out immediately after the election if you remember in Downing Street where he talked about a one nation society, people going as far as their talent was able to take them. I think those are noble ambitions but the gap between where the Prime Minister wants the country to be and where we are is pretty wide so let’s remember that only one in eight kids from a lower income background will become high income earners as an adult, so Britain has a real social mobility problem. If we are going to make progress I think what we have got to do is use the very welcome economic recovery as a basis for faster social progress and that means opening up educational opportunities, it means dealing with these issues of low pay but it also means that we genuinely have a society where it is ability and aptitude rather than background or birth that dictates where you get to in life.
DM: So some specific policies and let’s bring in there Mr Corbyn’s thoughts, he’s hit the nail on the head there judging from what you’ve just said there, about pay and dividends. It seems quite a novel idea and it would certainly force companies to think very hard about things wouldn’t it?
ALAN MILBURN: I think the idea of the living wage is something which I and many others passionately support and by the way, so do many businesses and it has been very interesting over the last few years to see without the government being involved how business themselves have taken the idea to heart. You get a better workforce if you give them better pay so that’s a really good idea. You’ve got to be very careful I think about some of the mechanisms that you deploy to make sure that the living wage is introduced. What you don’t want to end up with is a situation where you get better pay but fewer jobs and so you have got to be very careful, in particular with some sectors of the economy which are low paying – shops and hotels and care homes and so on that are low paying. If you just impose this thing without any thought there is a risk that this blunderbuss could have a counterproductive effect.
DM: There is also the issue, Mr Corbyn touched on it again and it has been discussed for quite a while, about multiples of salary, where you see these huge packages that board level executives are getting and the pay of the vast majority of the people who work for these companies.
ALAN MILBURN: I think there is a real issue and I think there is a mounting public concern about these issues, that unearned wealth at the top doesn't really sit very easily with stalling incomes in the middle and five million people who do the right thing in our country, which is to go out to work, stand on their own two feet, they strive not shirk but they are not earning enough to escape poverty pay so there is an issue there but we have again got to be very careful that in the process of making progress and moving towards a society that is less elitist and more equal, that what we aren’t doing is destroying enterprise, undermining business and ensuring that people really want to invest in this country so there’s often a really interesting headline but then when you get beneath the surface there is a lot of nuance.
DM: But do you think then, you mentioned there the ambition of Mr Cameron after being re-elected, but government policy has a direct bearing, it must do, on things like child poverty, benefit cuts, the so-called two child policy when it comes to receiving benefits, that must have an effect.
ALAN MILBURN: I think it does have an effect. To take a step back from it, I think people are uncomfortable with the notion that here we are – it’s easy to forget that we are the fifth wealthiest country in the world but we have got 2.3 million kids who the government officially describes as being poor so I think a wind of change really need to sweep through the country and we shouldn’t tolerate poverty as being inevitable, we shouldn’t accept the idea that if you go out to work and do the right thing, that you can’t get your heads above the poverty line.
DM: Thrown into this, of course introduced when you were a cabinet minister, we were talking about working tax credits and of course the whole furore we saw between the two budgets delivered by George Osborne, axed and then reintroduced and then more or less coming in through the back door through universal credit. Do you think that needs to be reconsidered?
ALAN MILBURN: It does need to be reconsidered and look, the original notion of universal credit was actually a really good idea but what’s happened over time is that it has been eroded and been cut back and so on so as the economy is improving and as the public finances are improving, there’s an opportunity for George Osborne to put his money where his mouth is and ensure that this genuinely is a one nation society where if you work hard and do the right thing you get an opportunity to get on. I was always brought up to believe as a kid that if you put in a bit of effort, you got a reward, that’s the glue that holds British society together. Now if we had the other idea developing that if you put in the effort and you don’t get a reward, that’s when you get social division and social conflict.
DM: Can I just ask you personally Mr Milburn, you’ve heard the criticism directly from many of those people close to the leadership within the Labour party but listening to this interview you are much closer to Mr Corbyn’s position than you are to Mr Cameron’s, you are not afraid to criticise government policy but there are those that say oh well, you’ve cozied up to Cameron, you’re nowhere near Corbyn and you’ve heard the insults about your Blairite past.
ALAN MILBURN: I don’t wear it as anything other than a matter of pride, if that’s the charge that I’m a Blairite, well yes I am and very proud of what New Labour did in office so look, on these issues I think it’s great that Jeremy Corbyn is talking about issues of low pay and affordable housing but if those are the only issues that he seems to be talking about and seems to be fixated about, it sends a very clear message to the vast majority of people in low and middle income Britain that somehow or other he doesn’t get their lives or understand their concerns. The truth is that in order to win in British politics you don’t lurch to the left, you stick firmly in the centre and I think frankly Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne must be laughing all the way to the bank because they have seen Mr Corbyn forsake the centre of British politics where elections are won not lost and …
DM: And they have lit that torch, that torch of aspiration that New Labour had.
ALAN MILBURN: Of course and where you win I think is when as both Mrs Thatcher and Mr Blair proved, you win when you combine a traditional notion of social justice with the recognition of individual aspiration. Now both Blair and Thatcher were unique politicians in the sense that they could touch the parts that others in their parties can’t reach. Appealing to the heartland gets you the heartland, the only way of winning an election for the Labour party is to win back Tory voters, not to vote Tory but to vote Labour and frankly I’m hard pressed to see that Mr Corbyn is the man that can do that job.
DM: Well great talking to you, very interesting, thank you very much indeed Mr Milburn, thank you for your time. Alan Milburn there.
